'Lights Out' a monster mash-up of clever innovations, horror conventions
Turn the light off.
You see the frightening silhouette of a crazed female brandishing Wolverine fingernails in the next room.
Turn the light on. Nothing there. Turn the light off.
You see the spooky figure again. This time, closer.
Turn the light on. Nothing there. Turn the light off, and ...
Why? Why? Why would you turn off the lights again when you know whatever happens next can't possibly be good?
This simple, alarmingly scary premise proved to be so effective in David F. Sandberg's tidy, two-minute, 41-second film short "Lights Out" that "Saw" and "The Conjuring" director James Wan decided to produce this feature expansion of Sandberg's horror experience.
It becomes an engaging monster mash-up of clever innovations and genre conventions, packed into an energetically fleet 81 minutes.
"Lights Out" opens with Paul (Billy Burke) falling victim to the aforementioned femme figure at his dark and creepy warehouse.
His elementary school-aged son Martin (Gabriel Bateman) can't function at school, so a nurse asks his twenty-something half-sister Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) to get him.
Martin tells her that his mom Sophie (Maria Bello) has been acting weird and talking to an invisible friend named Diana, and frightening him so much he can't sleep.
Rebecca instantly believes him (for reasons revealed later) and whisks him off to live with her in an apartment.
But Diana finds them, prompting Martin to shout, "It's not safe anywhere!"
Desperate, the two move back into Mom's old house, along with Rebecca's sometime doofus boyfriend Bret (Alexander DiPersia), hoping to solve the mystery and break Diana's hold on Mom.
All this actually makes sense in a weird, low-budget, cheesy horror film sort of way.
Unlike indiscriminate killers in similar movies, Diana has a motivation to target members of Sophie's family.
Swedish filmmaker Sandberg nimbly avoids the moldy clichés witnessed in most horror films. Then he adds wonderfully resourceful ways for Bret, Martin and Rebecca to create light sources to fight Diana, who apparently can snuff out electric lights at will.
(Yet, she can't stop flashlights from working?)
"Lights Out" isn't terribly sophisticated, and that's part of its appeal. Another part stems from the perfectly pitched performances by Palmer and Bello.
Palmer, a charismatic Australian actress who starred in "The Choice," plays Rebecca straight and neat, succumbing neither to over-the-top theatrics nor Amazonian levels of strength and resolve.
Bello imbues Sophie with disarming, tragic neediness masking a formidable sense of maternal protection.
Even DiPersia flirts with comic camp as the bumbling boyfriend Bret, who executes an applause-worthy escape with quick-thinking and a remote-control device.
When the theater lights go out, just remember his words. "You need a flashlight!"
Note: Watch Sandberg's short: http://bit.ly/1LJcpMW.
“Lights Out”
★ ★ ★
Starring: Teresa Palmer, Maria Bello, Billy Burke, Gabriel Bateman
Directed by: David Sandberg
Other: A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for drug references, violence. 81 minutes